United States v. Yousif Amin Mubarak

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
• Decided: October 21, 2025
• Docket: 24-3274
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION File Name: 25a0490n.06

No. 24-3274

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FILED FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT Oct 21, 2025 KELLY L. STEPHENS, Clerk ) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ) Plaintiff-Appellee, ) ON APPEAL FROM THE ) UNITED STATES DISTRICT v. ) COURT FOR THE ) SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF YOUSIF AMIN MUBARAK, ) OHIO Defendant-Appellant. ) ) OPINION )

Before: SUTTON, Chief Judge; BATCHELDER and LARSEN, Circuit Judges.

LARSEN, Circuit Judge. Yousif Mubarak was convicted at trial of seven counts of

transmitting a threat in interstate commerce. Mubarak challenges the admission of evidence of

uncharged threats, the jury instruction given on this evidence, and the admission of real-time cell

site location information obtained without a warrant. Seeing no reversible error, we AFFIRM.

I.

Over the course of one week in September 2021, Yousif Mubarak made well over a

hundred threatening or harassing phone calls to businesses, schools, and government officials in

the small town of Canal Winchester, Ohio. On Friday, September 10, he kicked things off with

eleven harassing calls to Judge Andrea Peeples of the county municipal court, who was then

presiding over his drunk driving case. He left a voicemail with his full name and number because

he wanted that “piece-of-[expletive] [expletive]-sucking [expletive]” to know who was calling.

Saturday saw another twenty calls to Judge Peeples. On Sunday night, he called in bomb threats No. 24-3274, United States v. Mubarak

to a local bar, a Home Depot, and a Best Western. He then called the county Sheriff’s Office to

threaten the dispatcher directly. And he continued calling the Sheriff’s Office incessantly over the

next twelve hours (8 p.m. to 8 a.m. Central Time) to inform its deputies that they were obese,

promiscuous, and not long for this world. After that all-nighter, Mubarak marked Monday

morning with more bomb threats to a middle school and a high school in the area, causing both to

be evacuated. On Thursday, September 16, he made another forty-one calls to threaten Judge

Peeples, finally culminating in an explicit threat to her life. Again, he did not hesitate to leave his

phone number and request she call him back. After all, he was “not even in [expletive] Ohio right

now,” so “[u]nless you [expletive] get a federal warrant,” unless “you . . . get the [expletive] FBI

on my [expletive],” he would have nothing to worry about.

The FBI arrested him in Oregon shortly thereafter. Mubarak was indicted on seven counts

of transmitting threats in interstate commerce in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 875(c) for threatening

three businesses, two schools, one sheriff, and one judge. After a four-day trial, the jury convicted

him on all counts. The court imposed seven 60-month sentences to run concurrently. Mubarak

now appeals.

II.

Mubarak first challenges the admission of evidence of other, uncharged calls he made that

weekend to a slew of other local businesses (Walmart, Kroger, Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Sunoco,

BP Duchess, Buffalo Wild Wings, Wendy’s, and Massey’s Pizza), to the Sheriff’s Office, and to

Judge Peeples. In its notice of intent, the Government urged admission of the calls either as

intrinsic (that is, res gestae) evidence or under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b). The district court

admitted the evidence under both rationales. The court concluded that the evidence was admissible

as intrinsic evidence because it was “spatially and temporally connected” to the charged conduct

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and that, in any event, Rule 404(b) would permit its admission to establish identity, intent, and

motive. R.135, PageID 771–75. Finally, the district court concluded that the evidence was not

substantially more unfairly prejudicial than probative, as required by Federal Rule of Evidence

403. Because we conclude that the evidence was properly admitted under Rules 403 and 404(b),

we need not reach the question of whether it would have been admissible as intrinsic evidence.

Rule 404(b) provides that evidence of a defendant’s “other crime, wrong, or act is not

admissible” to “show that on a particular occasion the person acted” similarly; but “[t]his evidence

may be admissible for another purpose, such as proving motive, opportunity, intent, preparation,

plan, knowledge, identity, absence of mistake, or lack of accident.” Fed. R. Evid. 404(b). Even

when evidence is properly admitted under Rule 404(b), it may still be excluded under Rule 403 if

its prejudicial effect substantially outweighs its probative value. See Fed. R. Evid. 403;

Huddleston v. United States, 485 U.S. 681, 687–88 (1988) (noting that when evidence is “offered

for a proper purpose” under Rule 404(b), “the evidence is subject only to general strictures limiting

admissibility such as Rules 402 and 403”). Mubarak challenges the district court’s determination

on both fronts.

Start with Rule 404(b).1 As proof of intent and identity, the district court admitted the

existence of, content of, and the volume of calls placed to other businesses and schools using the

same telephone numbers Mubarak used for the charged conduct. And in addition to identity and

1 There is some disagreement over the standard of review for the admission of other acts evidence. Compare United States v. Clay, 667 F.3d 689, 693 (6th Cir. 2012) (reviewing the legal determination that the acts were admissible for a permissible purpose de novo), and United States v. Mandoka, 869 F.3d 448, 456–57 (6th Cir. 2017) (same), with Clay, 667 F.3d at 703 (Kethledge, J., dissenting) (urging the application of an abuse of discretion standard and noting an “intra- circuit” conflict), and United States v. Allen, 619 F.3d 518, 523 (6th Cir. 2010) (applying abuse of discretion). Because the district court did not err under either standard, we need not resolve this ambiguity in this court’s precedent. -3- No. 24-3274, United States v. Mubarak

intent, the district court admitted as proof of motive evidence of uncharged phone calls to the

Sheriff’s Office and Judge Peeples in which Mubarak expressed anger at the way the two had

treated him in prior brushes with the law. On appeal, Mubarak focuses on the uncharged calls to

local businesses, arguing that those calls did not pertain to motive and, to the extent the evidence

was used to show intent or identity, it was cumulative and thus unfairly prejudicial, under Rule

403, given the otherwise thick evidence on both points. We review a district court’s determination

that evidence is not substantially more prejudicial than probative for an abuse of discretion,

allowing the lower court “very broad discretion in making its determinations.” United States v.

Libbey-Tipton, 948 F.3d 694, 701 (6th Cir. 2020) (citation modified); Clay, 667 F.3d at 693.

Indeed, we will take “a maximal view of the probative effect of the evidence and a minimal view

of its unfairly prejudicial effect.” Libbey-Tipton, 948 F.3d at 701 (quoting United States v.

Sassanelli, 118 F.3d 495, 498 (6th Cir. 1997)).

As the district court concluded, the challenged evidence was probative of the caller’s

identity, intent, and motive.2 The sole unfairly prejudicial effect Mubarak suggests is the tendency

of the evidence to portray him, a man with an Arabic name and a Middle Eastern accent, as

scheming to “blow up an entire community in central Ohio.” Appellant Br. at 32. But any unfair

prejudice flowing from this evidence is minimal given the unchallenged evidence of the charged

conduct—Mubarak’s bomb threats against three businesses and two schools in the same town.

This is not the rare case in which a lower court’s judgment call on the question of prejudice merits

upending.

2 The district court admitted the evidence of uncharged calls to local businesses only as evidence of identity and intent, not as evidence of motive. -4- No. 24-3274, United States v. Mubarak

III.

Mubarak also challenges the jury instructions on the other acts evidence. After admitting

that evidence, the district court administered a cautionary instruction, and then issued a final

instruction before the case was submitted to the jury. In both, the court listed uses of the evidence

under Rule 404(b) that it had not blessed in its evidentiary order. In the cautionary instruction, the

court added “opportunity” and “knowledge” as permitted uses of the evidence. And in the final

instruction, the court also added “preparation,” “plan,” “absence of mistake,” and “lack of

accident.”

Mubarak failed to preserve this challenge. His prior objection to the admission of the

evidence under Rule 404(b) largely ignored the bases to which he now objects. It therefore does

not suffice for an objection to the wording of either the cautionary or final instructions, which trial

counsel let pass without comment. United States v. Davis, 547 F.3d 520, 528 (6th Cir. 2008)

(discussing United States v. Fraser, 448 F.3d 833, 841–42 (6th Cir. 2006)). Thus, we review for

plain error. To prevail under that standard, Mubarak must show a clear error by the lower court

that affects his substantial rights. United States v. Aaron, 590 F.3d 405, 408 (6th Cir. 2009). Even

then, we have discretion to “correct the error only if [it] seriously affected the fairness, integrity,

or public reputation of the judicial proceedings.” Id. (citation omitted). In the jury instruction

context, this standard requires “a finding that, taken as a whole, the jury instructions were so clearly

erroneous as to likely produce a grave miscarriage of justice.” United States v. Robinson, 133

F.4th 712, 721 (6th Cir. 2025) (citation omitted).

To be sure, the cautionary and final instructions the district court gave were broader than

its prior ruling, which said that the government could introduce the evidence to show intent,

identity or motive; and for that reason, they conflicted with the use note in the model instructions

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issued by this court. See 6th Cir. Pattern Crim. Jury Instr., § 7.13 (directing courts to include only

the purposes for which the evidence has been admitted). Mubarak is also right that courts should

exercise caution in admitting and instructing the jury on a defendant’s prior bad acts given the

“high risk of confusion and misuse.” United States v. Johnson, 27 F.3d 1186, 1193 (6th Cir. 1994).

But the risks attendant to this particular error are fairly circumscribed. The court’s instruction that

the jury could consider the calls as evidence of intent, identity or motive was entirely proper. Any

risk here is not that the jury wrongly considered the calls for the improper purpose of showing

propensity but merely that the jury may have wrongly considered the calls as evidence of purposes

that would be proper in other cases—Mubarak’s knowledge, opportunity, preparation, plan, or

absence of mistake or accident. And it does not appear that any of these points were controverted

at trial or that Mubarak’s theory of the case rested on, say, a lack of opportunity to commit the

charged acts or a mistake in calling in multiple bomb threats.

In United States v. Johnson, this court reviewed a record in which a district court had

similarly given over‑inclusive and contradictory instructions on the use of bad acts evidence. 27

F.3d at 1194. We concluded that because “the district court’s instructions did ultimately include

a reference to the proper purpose for which prior acts evidence may be used,” because “counsel

registered no objection to the instruction given once the evidence was ruled admissible,” and

because “the evidence of the defendant’s guilt is overwhelming,” we could not say that the faulty

instructions produced a miscarriage of justice. Id. Johnson’s reasoning applies here too. In these

circumstances, we cannot say that Mubarak has carried the “difficult” burden of showing an effect

on his substantial rights. Greer v. United States, 593 U.S. 503, 508 (2021) (quoting Puckett v.

United States, 556 U.S. 129, 135 (2009)).

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IV.

Finally, Mubarak challenges the admission of cell-site location information (CSLI),

obtained without a warrant in real time over four hours on the night of September 12–13. This

evidence, placing Mubarak in Washington State, was used at trial to help prove that Mubarak

transmitted threats in interstate commerce.

The Fourth Amendment protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” U.S.

Const. amend. IV. So a threshold question is whether the collection of real-time CSLI amounts to

a “search.” In Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court made clear that government access

to historical CSLI is a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. 585 U.S. 296, 316

(2018). By contrast, this court’s pre-Carpenter caselaw holds that government access to real-time

CSLI is not a search, see United States v. Skinner, 690 F.3d 772, 781 (6th Cir. 2012), a question

on which Carpenter demurred, 585 U.S. at 316. The district court admitted the real-time CSLI

evidence here, holding that Skinner excluded such data collection from Fourth Amendment

challenge but that, if access to real-time CSLI were a search, the exigent circumstances exception

would apply.

Mubarak asks us to overrule Skinner and extend the Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter

to real-time CSLI. We decline the invitation. We don’t need to decide whether the gathering of

real-time CSLI constitutes a search. Nor do we need to decide whether Carpenter’s reservation of

the question is the sort of “intervening Supreme Court decision [that] gives us the right to revisit”

Skinner. Ne. Ohio Coal. For the Homeless v. Husted, 831 F.3d 686, 720 (6th Cir. 2016). Assuming

that the Government’s “pinging” of Mubarak’s phone for location data was a search, the district

court held that exigent circumstances justified the search without a warrant. Reviewing the district

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court’s factual determinations for clear error and its legal conclusions de novo, we agree. See

United States v. Pollard, 215 F.3d 643, 648 (6th Cir. 2000).

The government does not need a search warrant when the “exigencies of the situation make

the needs of law enforcement so compelling that a warrantless search is objectively reasonable

under the Fourth Amendment.” Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 319 (citation modified). For instance, the

need to “protect individuals who are threatened with imminent harm” in “ongoing emergenc[ies]”

like “bomb threats” justifies warrantless searches. Id. at 320. Those are the very circumstances

here.

Mubarak does not meaningfully dispute this point. Instead, he argues that “the exigent

circumstance that justified the warrantless search in the first place was gone” once it became

apparent on the first “ping” that he was well outside of Ohio and thus posed no imminent threat to

the dispatcher or other persons in Ohio. Appellant Br. at 51. We are unconvinced. The district

court reasonably concluded that the case involved “an ongoing emergency involving multiple

bomb threats.” R. 124, PageID 546 (emphasis added). The fact that Mubarak was not in Ohio did

not abate the danger reasonably feared by the dispatcher. One need not be presently in town to

have planted bombs in local businesses or to threaten to detonate them. Indeed, Mubarak told the

receptionist at Best Western that he had “two guys with suicide bombs” staying there who would

“blow the [expletive] up” “whenever I [expletive] tell them to.” Ex. 3.1. Nor was the cognizable

danger limited to Canal Winchester, Ohio. An individual willing to threaten indiscriminate murder

to multiple businesses and the sheriff can reasonably be thought to pose a danger to whomever he

happens to be around, whether in Ohio or Washington. And even if we were to conclude that the

exigency did not extend beyond the initial location “ping” that placed Mubarak in Washington

State, the resulting error would be harmless. That initial location, which Mubarak does not appear

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to challenge, placed him outside of Ohio and thus in interstate commerce, to say nothing of his

various statements over the phone that he was “not even in [expletive] Ohio right now” but rather

at “[his] girlfriend’s house [in] Redmond, [Washington].” Ex. 4.8, 7.2.

***

We AFFIRM.

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